 Welcome to Sportsman's Behind the Glass. In this very first episode, we are taking an in-depth look at our hull construction process and it all begins right behind me, right here in our lamination department. So without any further ado, let's step inside and let's take a look at what's behind the glass. The hull is the bottom of the boat. It's what dictates the shear line, the length and so much more. Sportsman has an innovative approach to hull construction, where we believe that these materials and processes yield the absolute best results. Like every great boat, the construction process begins with the perfect mold. Our molds go through rigorous maintenance to ensure every new hull meets our quality standards. The team spends countless hours sanding and buffing them to perfection to achieve the highest quality part. To understand our hull construction, we first need to understand that boats are built from the outside in, starting with the outside layer called the gelcoat layer. Gelcoat is a pigmented layer of resin. Unlike traditional automotive paints where gloss and the base color are layered, gelcoat is one single tough layer. This allows it to be sanded and buffed throughout its life to bring back the original finish. Once the gelcoat has been sprayed on the mold, to ensure proper thickness and consistency, a quality technician takes measurements using a mill gauge. This is just one of the many steps that we take throughout the build process to ensure consistent build quality. The results are closely recorded using a tablet at each of the quality stations. After proper curing time on that first layer, work begins on the second layer, commonly referred to as the skin coat layer. This is the first line of defense against water penetration. One key advantage that we have here is that we use a vinyl ester resin. Vinyl ester is known for its toughness and its ability to withstand blistering. To finish this layer, the team will use special rollers to make sure that any air that got trapped between the first and second layer gets released, thus avoiding any air voids down the road. Once the skin coat layer has dried, we actually fill all of the streaks with a polyester putty. This has some key advantages for us. For one, it actually makes a smooth surface down the hall, which makes it a lot easier to layer fiberglass and avoids any air voids in between layers. Secondly, the putty is very strong and adds even more strength into our hull construction process. The streaks are considered a high impact area. The added support given by this putty will give you a smoother ride and a stronger hull. Once the putty is in place, we'll add many different types of composite materials with different purposes, ranging between screw retention all the way to sound dampening. First is the hull sight. They receive a full layer of coring. This material is great for sound dampening and rigidity properties. To finish off the lamination process, we will hand lay bulk fiberglass to the specified density. This step ensures proper thickness across the entire hull. We've devised a quick demonstration here of what coring does to fiberglass. We have the same amount of fiberglass all throughout this entire piece. The only difference is on this side, we've laminated a piece of coring. So over on this side, over a long span, simple force, you could see how much bend we have. And then over on this side, I cannot get this to bend. It's very, very strong. Now the thicknesses of this demonstration have no correlation to our hull sides or any other part of our boat. It is simply to demonstrate the strength of cord versus just fiberglass. Next, we focus on the pinning flange, an area that requires high screw retention. Later in the process, we will attach the hull and deck using this flange. Arguably, the most important piece of composite material is at the transom, where engines will apply high levels of stress and test the strength of your boat's transom. In this area, we use a no-rot composite material called Couserboard, which is made up of high density polyurethane foam and is reinforced with layers of fiberglass, giving you a very strong and reliable transom. These materials significantly strengthen the transom and hull sides while providing better performance and reducing the overall weight. As you may have noticed, each of these materials are precision cut right here at Sportsman using our state-of-the-art CNC machining. This ensures that every single sportsman boat is built to tight tolerances and very precise specifications. Our first machine is used to cut the bulk fiberglass layers that are laid throughout all of our fiberglass pieces. The second machine precision cuts all of our composite coring materials that are laid throughout each part. These machines, they run from 12 to 16 hours every single day just to keep up with our production line. Later in the process, we will pull the hull out of the mold and scrutinize every single inch to make sure that it meets our high-quality standards. Throughout this process, you've seen highly skilled boat builders hand-crafting masterpieces here at the Sportsman Plants. This craft takes years to master, and even with the introduction of new technology, this is still very much a fully hand-crafted process. Over the next several weeks, we will dive into more of our processes here at Sportsman. Thank you for taking the time today to take a look at our hull construction process. This is part of our SportTech Advanced Fabrication process. This proprietary combination of processes and materials yields the best results each step of the way, and has been thoroughly tested for durability, longevity, and finish. All Sportsman boats feature 100% composite construction with zero wood. Join us in our next episode for our next installment of Sportsman's Behind the Glass, where we take a look at the spine of our boats, the Stringer system. From Summerville, South Carolina, my name is Victor, and thank you for watching.